A recent paper claims that the internet has made us measurably happier as a society. Photo / Getty Images
A recent paper claims that the internet has made us measurably happier as a society. Photo / Getty Images
Research contends the internet doesn’t deserve bad press, with benefits for the poor, ill and elderly.
According to a type of trend article popular in certain circles these days, the web is some kind of social parasite, eating our decency, confidence and good humour away.
It's filled us with Fomo (fear of missing out); it's made us fake; it's torpedoed love and intimacy.
It has also, as per a new paper, made us measurably happier as a society.
The paper "Life Satisfaction in the Internet Age", to be published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour, is the first to study the long-term, at-scale impact of the internet on personal satisfaction.
The researchers - both of whom are based in Israeli universities - analysed almost a decade of data from Israel's Annual Social Surveys, encompassing responses from more than 70,000 people.
Through a series of statistical models, they were then able to isolate the specific relationship between internet adoption (which is up in the past decade) and self-described life satisfaction (which is up slightly among most people, and stable among seniors).
The main finding, for those who'll find the paper TL: DR (too long didn't read) - internet users are more satisfied with their lives than non-users, and internet adoption over the past decade has directly (and positively!) impacted life-satisfaction.
Those effects are especially pronounced among the elderly, the poor and the ill or handicapped.
"If senior citizens, people with low income and those suffering health problems are able to effectively use the many options offered by the internet," the researchers write, "they may experience greater life satisfaction in the long run and move forward in a more prosperous society."
The study isn't perfect, of course. Because it relies on national survey data, there's a certain lack of nuance.
The Annual Social Survey does not ask people how often they use the internet, for instance - just if they use it at all.
The researchers also say they're holding out for more reliable longitudinal data. Still, this should help answer a Big Question about the role of the internet in our lives - a role so frequently, and shortsightedly, downplayed and demonised.
Though the literature hasn't yet conclusively established using the internet increases individual satisfaction, there's way more to suggest that it does than doesn't.
Sure, scrolling Instagram can make you feel like you're having a lame time, and curating your Facebook brand can be stressful, and whiling away hours on 4chan or League of Legends can be isolating.
But those harms are eclipsed, several times over, by the psychic benefits of the internet: stuff like having access to information on literally every subject under the sun, not to mention a huge community of strangers, family and friends.
The more ingrained the web becomes in our lives, of course, the more we take all that for granted.
But it might be time for a bit of perspective: If you think your Fomo is bad on Instagram, what would it feel like if you didn't even have the internet?
Windows 10 opens on 75 million devices
The uptake of Windows 10 is progressing ahead of analysts' expectations. Photo / AP
Microsoft's Windows 10 has reached more than 75 million devices in almost a month since the operating system was released.
More than 90,000 personal-computer and tablet models have upgraded to the new OS, which is running in 192 countries, according to Yusuf Mehdi, the company's marketing chief for Windows and devices.
The app store for Windows 10 had six times more downloads per device than Windows 8, he said.
The company has promised shareholders that Windows 10 will reach one billion users within three years, its fastest adoption rate ever. Within the first 24 hours of the July 29 release, 14 million devices were running the operating system, Mehdi wrote in a blog post last month.
"Adoption for Windows 10 is professing ahead of Street expectations," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. "[Chief executive Satya] Nadella finally got it right this time, as consumers and enterprises like what they see with this new flagship platform."
Ives had projected 50 million devices would be running on Windows 10 by the end of August. Windows 8 reached fewer than 15 million devices in its first month, he said.
It took more than half a year for Microsoft to sell 100 million licences for Windows 8 after its release. Mehdi said Cortana, Microsoft's voice-controlled personal assistant, has told more than 500,000 jokes since the release. Nadella has said Cortana is "perhaps the biggest innovation in productivity we've done".
